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May is here and I’m thrilled to say that I made it to payday with $223 in my checking account and $13 in my wallet. This is a grand total of 236, yay me! At the end of last month I had $32, so this is a big improvement. I have also $130 in a savings account, thanks to an automatic transfer program at my bank. So – in reality, I am entering May with $336. In the grand scheme of things, this is not much money, but I feel really good about it.
As for how I managed my money during the month of April….Once again I was over-budget in the food/home/personal item category (by $124) and my personal allowance (by $57). I was under-budget on my gas (by $91.41) as well as smaller amounts for parking and lawn care. Although I helped Pete out of his jam, I didn’t take as much of an additional hit as I had anticipated – about $50 more than I had planned to help him. Overall, I managed pretty well and I’m really excited about that. I am feeling encouraged. For May, I will plan to increase my food/house/personal budget to $200, I only had it at $150 in April which was clearly unreasonable. I think $200 is more reasonable, I will just have to really stretch those dollars. For gas, I’m going to decrease my budget from $250 to $200. I’ll really have to keep an on eye on this. I believe the reason it was so under-budget was that I was out of town for nearly a week and didn’t drive. Honestly, at $200, I’m allotting one true fill-up each week. My gas guzzling 1997 SUV takes nearly $40 to fill up when it’s on empty. I’ll monitor this one closely.
In addition to watching how I spend money more closely, I’ve been trying to examine the things I spend money on. Case in point – baby carrots…. Did you know that a pound of baby carrots costs nearly a $1 more than a pound of regular carrots? I had some “regular” carrots back in March and as I dug out my peeler, I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to peel and cut up carrots. As I peeled them, I recalled hearing that most of the packaged baby carrots we purchase are really whole carrots that have been whittled down anyway. It really doesn’t take that much time to peel a carrot and chop it up. I guess we’re paying for the convenience… Well, I won’t plan to buy any more “baby” carrots! And those bags of lettuce? What a rip off! I’ve gotten much more bang for my buck by just purchasing the full head of lettuce. Who knew? I’m still trying to work the circulars at the grocery stores and adding coupons in when I can. As evidenced by my overspending (consistently) in this area, I’m probably not as adept at this as I could be, but I do think I’m getting better…. Well, sometimes I feel that I’m getting better. However, in late April I headed into the store with my coupons for soap and deodorant. I made the mistake of not going directly to the personal hygiene items and was seduced by the buy-one-get-one free sale. I ended up spending $66 dollars. This was the trip that initially put me over-budget in this category. I also spent entirely too much money eating out – which is what put me over-budget for my personal allowance. I enjoy eating out, but I really have to be strategic about this in May. I have a bad habit of wanting to pick
